It may look like a dilapidated building on the outside, but you never know what lies behind those walls.
Sometimes, when the timing is right the massive iron gates are opened to let the residents pass in or out, one catches a glimpse of a courtyard filled with lush tropical plants, splashes of bright colors, a stone pathway winding its way through a garden, and often a burbling fountain to block the sounds of the city.
Other times, what lies beyond, is nothing more than as advertised! But, beautiful in its own way…
It’s been almost 6 years since the October 27, 2006 day in Oaxaca when Indymedia video journalist, Brad Will, was murdered as he was filming a confrontation between APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) and paramilitary forces affiliated with then governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, during the (at that point) 5-month long teachers’ strike.
By Mark Stevenson / AP Wednesday, May 23, 2012. 1 day ago
MEXICO CITY (AP)‚ — Prosecutors in southern Mexico say they have captured a man suspected in the killing of a U.S. journalistBradley Will during protests against the Oaxaca state government in 2006.
A spokesman for the Oaxaca state prosecutors office says suspect Lenin Osorio was captured early Wednesday.
The spokesman says he is not authorized to be quoted by name, and that he does not know which side of the conflict the suspect was on.
Will was shot as he videotaped a clash between protesters and government supporters.
The New York man was covering the conflict for Indymedia.org. He sympathized with the protesters, one of whom was arrested in 2008 for the killing but was later released.
The protests started as a teachers’ strike and paralyzed Oaxaca’s capital for months until federal police intervened.
###
As I write, journalists are being targeted all over the world and the teachers are again occupying Oaxaca’s zócalo, as they have every year since. However, perhaps there will be justice for one of the 26, 2006 murder victims. Vamos a ver….
The Revolution Next Door is a video tribute to Brad Will and includes footage shot by him, including his last tape.
To follow this news on Twitter, The Friends of Brad Will website lists the following Spanish language sites:
The public spaces of Oaxaca are well-used. The cobblestone-paved Jardín del Pañuelito (Little Handkerchief Garden), that borders the south side of the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, complex is no exception.
Especially on Saturdays, when it is often used for wedding processions…
Occasionally, it is converted into a conference venue…
Frequently, a stage is set up and a concert ensues…
And, last year it was transformed into a movie set!
Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico’s most revered writers, died yesterday at the age of 83.
It was the California connection that allowed for my introduction to the writings of Fuentes. The acquaintance came through The Old Gringo, a fictionalized story of the disappearance in Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution, of real life writer and US Civil War veteran, Ambrose Bierce. Following the Civil War, Bierce wound up in California, where he was a contributor to the literary journal, The Argonaut, founded and edited by one of my relatives, about whom, Bierce wrote a typically acerbic epitaph: Here lies Frank Pixley — as usual. So, in my ongoing attempt to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding living and being in Mexico, reading the The Old Gringo was a no-brainer.AsThe Guardian’s obituary of Carlos Fuentes concludes,
Throughout his life, wherever he lived, Mexico was the centre of Fuentes’s artistic preoccupations. In his late 70s, he provided a typically graphic description of the attraction he felt for his own land: “It’s a very enigmatic country, and that’s a good thing because it keeps us alert, makes us constantly try to decipher the enigma of Mexico, the mystery of Mexico, to understand a country that is very, very baroque, very complicated and full of surprises.”
Carlos Fuentes is not uncontroversial, but you should see for yourself. If you are not familiar with his writings, you might want to visit your local library and checkout a book or two. For those in Oaxaca, the Oaxaca Lending Library has the following titles:
Fiction Adan en Eden Baroque Concerto Burnt Water Cuerpos y Ofrendas Campaign Cantar de Ciegos/To Sing of the Blind Change of Skin Christopher Unborn Constancia: y Otras Novelas para Vírgenes Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins Crystal Frontier Diana the Goddess Who Hunts: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone The Death of Artemio Crus: A Novel Destiny and Desire: A Novel Diana o la Cazadora Solitaría Distant Relations The Eagle’s Throne Good Conscience Gringo Viejo Hydra Head Muerte de Artemio Cruz El Naranjo Old Gringo The Orange Tree La Region Mas Transparente Terra Nostra Where the Air Is Clear Years with Laura Diaz Fuentes Cabeza de la Hidra Vida Está en Otra Parte
Non Fiction Aura The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World En Esto Creo Latin America at War with the Past Mexico: Una Vision de Altura: Un Recorrido Aereo de Pasado Al Presente Myself with Others This I Believe Todos los Gatos Son Pardos The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait New Time for Mexico
My mom was a folk dancer. She had studied ballet, tap, and acrobatic dancing when she was young and brought that training and muscle memory along with her when she took up folk dancing in her mid thirties. I spent many hours over the years watching her dance; the Kamarinskaya from Russia, Swedish Hambo, Fandango from Portugal, Mexico’s Jarabe Tapatio, and so many more. In addition to being a talented dancer, she made her own costumes. A dressmaker’s dummy was a permanent fixture in her bedroom, yards of colorful cotton fabric and braid were piled next to the sewing machine, and in the evenings her hands and eyes were often occupied embroidering pieces for a new costume.
Mom died in 1989, but not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. So, on this Mother’s Day, this is for you mom…
Mexican authorities have confirmed that a jaguar has been spotted for the first time near Mitla.
According to Mexico’s National Commission for Protected Areas (CONANP), the jaguar caught on camera is the first one confirmed to exist in the area of San Pablo Villa de Mitla, which is part of the 4,900-hectare Yagul and Mitla Natural Monument.
Pavel Palacios Chavez, an administrator at Yagul and Mitla Natural Monument, said the jaguar likely migrated through heavily forested and mountainous areas from Oaxaca’s Sierra Juarez mountain range.
“There hadn’t been a sighting in this area of the central valleys. It’s a high-altitude zone that is connected to the Sierra Juarez. We believe that it’s this connectivity between the forests of Sierra Juarez and the forests of this part of the valley that has facilitated the transfer of this species,” he said.
Authorities detected the jaguar – North America’s largest feline – using remote cameras which were left attached to trees and other vegetation. They allowed conservationists to observe the movement of animals throughout the night. [Read full article and watch video HERE]
Hmmm… I wonder what brought the jaguar down from the Sierra Juárez? I hope it stays away from local livestock and finds its way back up into the mountains.
Today, May 10, is Día de la Madre in Mexico and it is celebrated in much the same way as in el norte.
The celebration migrated south from the USA in the early 20th century and was embraced and promoted by the Catholic Church AND the anticlerical Revolutionaries. As for their reasons, I will quote from Liza Bakewell’s book, Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun.
… around the 1850s the Liberals… were nervous about women’s growing participation in the public sphere. Establishing motherhood as venerable and the home as sanctified… would give women a sphere of their own where they could be boss. Also, it would keep them off the streets and out of the workplace where they had begun to compete with men for jobs.
Under their watch, everyday motherhood became an exalted madre-hood…. The twentieth-century Revolutionaries who succeeded them took the idea and ran with it, adding in 1922 a ritual, Mother’s Day… [p. 84]
However distasteful the reasons behind the establishment of Mother’s Day in Mexico, it does nothing to diminish the need to honor these beautiful, hardworking, formidable, and loving women.
GW anthropology professor Jeffrey Blomster’s research featured in PNAS journal
WASHINGTON—George Washington University Professor Jeffrey P. Blomster’s latest research explores the importance of the ballgame to ancient Mesoamerican societies. Dr. Blomster’s findings show how the discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of the region in the iconography and ideology of the game, a point that had not been previously documented by other researchers. Dr. Blomster’s paper, Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico, is featured in the latest issue of Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Dr. Blomster, GW associate professor of anthropology, has spent 20 years researching the origin of complex societies in Mesoamerica. The participation of early Mixtec societies in ballgame imagery is a new aspect of his research. For the journal publication, Dr. Blomster worked with undergraduate students Izack Nacheman and Joseph DiVirgilio to create artistic renditions of the figurine artifacts found in Mexico.
While early games used a hard rubber ball, the ballgames Dr. Blomster researches bear little resemblance to today’s Major League Baseball. The games and the costumes or uniforms participants wore were tied to themes of life and death, mortals and underworld deities or symbolizing the sun and the moon. In some instances, the ballcourt itself represented a portal to the underworld.
According to Dr. Blomster, “Because the ballgame is associated with the rise of complex societies, understanding its origins also illuminates the evolution of socio-politically complex societies.”
During the Early Horizon period, or roughly between 1400 BCE (Before the Common Era) and 1700 BCE, there was little evidence of ballgame activity in the way of artifacts in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Dr. Blomster’s findings of a clay figurine garbed in distinctive ballgame costume, similar to both Olmec figurines and monumental sculptures from the Gulf Coast, indicate such engagement did take place in the area.
“Exploring the origins and spread of the ballgame is central to understanding the development of the Mesoamerican civilization,” he said. “We know there were earlier versions of a ballgame prior to the Early Horizon with both a ballcourt and rubber balls found in coastal Chiapas and the Gulf Coast, but the institutionalized version of the ballgame, a hallmark of Mesoamerican civilizations, developed during the Early Horizon. While there has been some limited evidence about the participation of the nearby Valley of Oaxaca in the ballgame, the Mixteca has largely been written off in terms of involvement in the origins of complex society in ancient Mexico. This discovery reemphasizes how the ancient Mixtecs were active participants in larger Mesoamerican phenomenon.”
###
By the way, there was a lot more to these ballgames than mere athletic competitions — think ritual, conflict resolution, sacrifice. Below is the ballcourt just up the hill at Monte Alban.
As the promotional material for Ma (yo) en Oaxaca, Mujer (es) Arte y Cultura explains (loose translation), like a skilled weaver, women create the fabric of life… part of the history of humanity, intelligence that moves, the look that looks, which is regarded in the construction of better horizons of life for her and those who are around her. And so, from May 3rd through 13th, the women of Oaxaca are being celebrated with workshops, exhibitions, lectures, and concerts.
Last night, under the supermoon, one of the accomplished women of Oaxaca, Alejandra Robles, gave a free concert, just a block away, in the Plaza de la Danza…
Ma (yo) en Oaxaca is a party for all of the principles of inclusion and participation to make possible the knowledge and appreciation of the cultural richness of groups which, for various reasons, have been marginalized.
Every week or so I get asked, ‘Is it safe to go to Mexico?’ I had always said, if you’re thoughtful about where you go, yes. But after my most recent trip there, I’m changing my answer… to a question:
Do you think it’s safe to go to Texas?
To be clear, violence in Mexico is no joke. There have been over 47,000 drug-related murders alone in the past five years. Its murder rate – 18 per 100,000 according to this United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime report – is more than three times the US rate of 4.8 per 100,000. Though Mexican tourism is starting to bounce back, Americans appear more reluctant to return than Canadians and Brits (5.7 million Americans visited in 2011, down 3% from 2010 – and, according to Expedia, more than four of five bookings were adults going without children). Many who don’t go cite violence as the reason.
What you don’t get from most reports in the US is statistical evidence that Americans are less likely to face violence on average in Mexico than at home, particularly when you zero in on Mexico’s most popular travel destinations. For example, the gateway to Disney World, Orlando, saw 7.5 murders per 100,000 residents in 2010 per the FBI; this is higher than Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, with rates of 1.83 and 5.9 respectively, per a Stanford University report (see data visualization here, summarized on this chart, page 21). Yet in March, the Texas Department of Public Safety advised against ‘spring break’ travel anywhere in Mexico, a country the size of the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Never mind that popular destinations like the Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica have far higher homicide rates (36, 42 and 52 per 100,000). Why the singular focus?
Before you nix Mexico altogether, consider these five things:
Like 80+ countries in the world, International Workers’ Day is a national holiday in Mexico. Early this morning in Oaxaca, streets were closed as contingents began gathering and then marching toward the city center. And for hours, they poured into the Zócalo and Alameda for speeches, music, and bottle rockets, all of which will, no doubt, continue for hours more.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
FYI: CTM stand for the Confederación de Trabajadores de México, the largest confederation of Mexican labor unions. Think, AFL-CIO in El Norte (though with some significant differences).
¡Feliz Día Internacional de los Trabajadores!
Update: For a more nuanced view of yesterday’s march, see the report by longtime resident, Nancy Davies.
Mexican Peso Converter
View From Casita Colibrí 